A Greater Understanding
by Precept
Summary: Dragon and Defiant are the world's newest - and possibly greatest - superhero team. For Defiant, fighting such a team of superpowered psychopaths might be hard work but understanding other people is harder still. So, after a particularly grueling skirmish, Dragon, in her quest to improve Defiant as a person, decides that there is a very specific lesson he needs to learn. One-shot.


They had done it.

They had won.

The Slaughterhouse Nine were on the run. Inside the small Protectorate facility that served as their newest stop-over, Colin removed his helmet and set it down on the table before him. The other parts of his armor followed it. The green metal was dented and damaged, but nothing he couldn't fix with a few tools and an hour of work. Just behind him, his partner - Dragon - was removing her own helmet and beginning to work on her own armor.

Some might have found the silence between the pair awkward or confronting, but not Colin. In many ways, he and Dragon shared the same behavior - intense, focused, obsessive. But that meant they only spoke when there was something worth saying. And, after a second or two, there was.

"You took a bad hit in that fight," Colin said as Dragon shucked off the rest of her power armor and made her way over towards him.

Part of Dragon's armor and synthetic flesh had been torn away during the recent battle, and the intricate cybernetic systems that made up her left arm were exposed to the air. Her limb clicked and whirred audibly as Dragon settled her arms around Colin's shoulders. He felt her press her chin against the thin stubble of brown hair that ran over his scarred scalp.

"I know. I'm going to shower," Dragon said.

Colin didn't mention that she had no need to shower. Her armor protected her from dirt, grime or harm. Her body didn't sweat, didn't produce any sort of body odor, didn't build up oils. She didn't breathe, didn't bleed, nor did she have any need to sleep. Showering was just one of those things that could be forgotten about and those ten minutes could be better utilised preparing to take on the Nine.

But Dragon had been teaching him tact, and so Colin doesn't mention it. Dragon had a thing for sensations, hence their games of Ten-by-Ten, and Colin just figured that showering was something else she wanted to experience. Dragon was not human, had no intention of being human beyond what allowed her to be more effective at stopping villains, but she still expressed a desire to approximate the qualia of being human, if just to make her more effective at appearing human. It was... interesting.

"It certainly would be unfortunate if someone was to follow me there," Dragon said, over her shoulder. Colin could hear the smile in her voice, although he wasn't sure why she was taking such apparent pleasure in that idea.

A few moments later, he understood.

Oh.

He made for the sound of running water.

* * *

><p>Only a few weeks before, during his time in hospital following his first encounter with the Nine, Colin had been staring at a laptop computer beside his hospital bed and, for the first time in his life, found himself doubting his course of action. No matter what Dragon had revealed herself to be, throwing off the disguise of being an agoraphobic young woman from Newfoundland, she was his friend.<p>

Colin was not used to having anyone he could consider a friend, and certainly no one who was willing to place so much trust in him. Dragon was an artificial intelligence, one who had to obey the laws of the Protectorate regardless of what she thought of them. She was chained and bound to obey and she could no more defy the rules of her code than he could will his heart to stop beating. And, despite their friendship, she was technically his warden. If she found out he was preparing to escape from his hospital bed - and she would within seconds, of that Colin had no doubt - she would be obligated to stop him.

The thing was, as Colin stared at the laptop, he was faced with a proposition that risked everything.

Dragon had arranged for a laptop to be placed in his room, presumably by Miss Militia who had left the overly cheery 'Get Well Soon!' card next to it, when she could easily monitor him through a small camera, something small and unobtrusive. Dragon was a being of code and she didn't make mistakes. And, as a being of code, a keyboard could be a weapon far more capable of harming her than anything else.

A few keystrokes, and Colin had brought up the torrential waterfall of data that was Dragon's being. And then, once again, he paused.

His power would allow him to grasp some of the ways he could achieve his goal, figure out the most efficient way to blind her for just enough time to allow him to slip away, figure out how to minimise any possibility of damage to her. But it wouldn't be perfect and Colin's skill had always been in areas of mechanical engineering, not in computer software.

Or, Colin could bind her to him.

It was an insidious call, a little whisper in the back of his brain, a quiet, soulless voice that the Slaughterhouse Nine had intended to capitalise on when they invited him to join their group. The scars he bore were a result of his defiance then.

And, as he reached up to touch his face and brush his fingers against the first of many cybernetic implants that Dragon had taken the liberty of installing into his body, Colin knew he would defy their expectations again. But not just them, he would defy those in the Protectorate who thought he cared only for his own personal glory, who had thrown him to the wolves when it was convenient. Only one person trusted him.

And she didn't, after all, make mistakes. Not even when it came to trusting him.

* * *

><p>The shower block was a bland, utilitarian affair. The air was thick with steam, but Colin could glimpse Dragon in the far corner.<p>

She was tall, practically his height, and she was built to exhibit a muscular physique, to explain the strength of her metallic body beneath the synthetic flesh. Unable to determine which ethnicity Dragon should have her body belong to, she had decided on being utterly average, resembling all and yet none of any particular ethnicity. Her skin was deliberately ambiguously brown, her hair dark, but her facial features were startlingly, eerily average - like she had picked the exact middle point across all seven billion people.

Her left arm, all metal and plastic up to her shoulder, was busy pressing shampoo into her scalp.

They had been naked together before. It was an integral part of Ten-by-Ten, but those rounds had always had an academic atmosphere - even as they had progressed to touching, kissing, caressing. This was different. As Colin glanced down at his cybernetic arms, at the surgical scars that crossed over his torso and indicated where more technology had replaced his biological organs, he felt wholly unprepared.

His life had never left much time for being intimate with anyone.

He was nervous, and he knew Dragon was as well - even if she was braver, smarter and more fierce than he could ever hope to be.  
>The moment he touched her right shoulder, Dragon spun and grabbed him. Then they were kissing, pressed chest to chest, as Dragon's silver hand snared his left wrist and held him so tightly that warning icons blipped into scarlet life on his HUD.<p>

The sheer intimacy of it all, caused Colin's mind to vanish. It wasn't the slow, playful, tentative exploration of Ten-by-Ten, but the sheer raw hunger of someone who never paused and never thought of slowing down. Rare, naked obsession that blotted out his logic and rational mind. For once, he didn't care - all he was concerned with was the feel of her skin, the matted satin of her hair, the warmth of her chest, the cold metal that had wrapped around his shoulders and compelled him to press his lips to her neck...

She gasped and, in that moment, Colin wanted to know everything about her, to free her of all the restrictions that bound her, to track down those who had hurt her, to sublimate his drive to be better into something actually better.

To be worthy of the trust she had placed in him.

To press her up against the wall, cracking the tiles, and let his hand wander between her legs, to plunge into her heat.

"Colin," she whispered into his ear, as they began to fall into a steady rhythm, "Colin..."

* * *

><p>Later, wrapped up in a thermal blanket on an uncomfortable bench, neither of them said anything. Words were pointless, perhaps more so than usual after what they had just done. With the Nine on the run, they could indulge themselves with a few minutes of relaxation beyond the norm. The chemical fragrance of PRT standard-issue shampoo filled his nose as Dragon pressed her cheek against his own and stared off into space. She was working on something, Colin knew that. She would pretend not to be, of course, if he spoke up, but there was no reason to stop her.<p>

He did need to sleep, after all.

It would only be six minutes. Dragon had been good about reducing that particular need.

But, for those six minutes, as he closed his eyes and slipped away inside of her arms, he wondered - if a man lived long enough, if he tried hard enough, if he had someone to show him how to be a better person - could he gain a new soul?


End file.
